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Canu Heledd

Cynddylan’s Hall is dark tonight,
Without fire, without bed.
I weep a while; then I am silent.

This stanza is from the Canu Heledd sequence associated with lost sagas telling of the destruction of Pengwern in the area of Powys which then extended into parts of what are now the English counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire. Heledd was Cynddylan’s sister and the verses she ostensibly speaks lament the loss of these lands and of her brother. The run of stanzas beginning with the words ‘Stauell Gyndylan …’ have been translated often, perhaps because they are the most poignant and accessible to modern sensibilities, but also, I think, because they are relatively easy to render into English. By contrast, the run of stanzas spoken by Heledd as a lament for her brother are less frequently translated, I think not only because the praise of his military virtues is less accessible today but also because their structure makes it more difficult to render them into verse that works in modern English. Here is one stanza from this sequence:

Unlike the Cynddylan’s Hall stanza which which starts with a subject->verb->object structure followed by qualifiers, the sentence in the first two lines here is basically a string of nouns with a single verb. Rendered literally word for word into English these two lines read:

Cynddylan boar[-like?] warrior lion
Wolf following attacker.

Unpacking this into fluent verse is less easy. The third line is only a little less difficult:

Not restore boar place [of] the father.

This could be a general statement that a boar does not return to its place of origin but in context it seems to mean that Cynddylan will never again return to hall he inherited from his father. Calling Cynddylan ‘boar’ is consistent with the animal imagery used to describe him elsewhere in the sequence. So the whole stanza conveys the idea that Cynddylan has the qualities of a boar, a lion and a wolf in pursuing his attacker, but that this did not save him. Is there more?

The word ‘gulhwch’ is suggestive. It looks like the mutated form of the name Culhwch, and it has been suggested that this is deliberate. ‘Hwch’ means pig and Cynddylan has already been described as ‘gwythhwch’ (‘wild pig’, and so ‘boar’) as well as other animals to suggest his ferocity, as was usual for descriptions of warriors at this time. But ‘culhwch’ is more difficult to interpret. The character in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen may take his name from being born in a sty or narrow pig run (‘cul’ means ‘narrow’, though in relation to meat it can mean ‘lean’). Mythological origins of Culhwch as a pig deity have been suggested, though for the purposes of the only tale we have about him he is a typical folklore hero figure who goes on a quest and with Arthur’s help wins the hand of a giant’s daughter. Were there other tales about him which are obliquely referenced in the use of his name in this poem, or should we take the word here as just another synonym for ‘boar’?

That seems the sensible course, but as he is called boar (‘twrch’) in line three of the stanza we might wonder why it has to be repeated. One answer is that the requirements of metre and verbal patterning would have been as much an issue for the poet as the story being told. But then so were the techniques of gnomic reference by which proverbial wisdom or moral maxims could be obliquely included. It could be that there is something about Culhwch that we do not know that is fleetingly included here, lying beneath the surface meaning of ‘boar’. There is also the further possibility of scribal emendation. One suggestion here is that the original word was ‘culwyd’ (‘lord’) which was either accidentally or deliberately changed by the copyist of the manuscript we have.(*) Rejecting this, another commentator thinks it is best seen simply as part of a dense array of animal attributes heaped upon Cynddylan in these verses.(**)

Whatever view we come to in reading this poem, it is clear that translation into an equally concise and multi-referenced English version looks like a vain hope. So let us return to the ‘Cynddylan’s Hall …’ sequence. I have already given the first stanza. Here is the last: